North of Beautiful (12 page)

“Really?” Mom asked, cautiously curious.

“I really need to get back there sometime soon. You should come with me.” Norah sipped her coffee with a meditative expression.

“Oh, I don’t —”

Norah’s lips had pursed, as she concentrated on her coffee and she interrupted Mom’s protests now. “Definitely bright. And something more.” She rubbed the fingers in one hand together as if trying to filter the taste itself.

I took an obedient sip and tasted . . . coffee.

“Coconut,” Mom said, looking surprised. She set the cup down on the table, excited. “In the back of my throat.”

“Yes! And a little floral, right?” Norah asked, nodding as if willing Mom to taste it. She leaned toward her now, her eyes probing, as Mom sampled the coffee again.

Mom’s lips puckered; she nodded.

Norah sat back, satisfied. “The best Kenyans are the pinnacle of the coffee world. This is definitely my favorite East African bean.”

“Guatemala, Kenya . . . do you really visit all those places?” I asked and sipped again.

“Oh my God, yes. And I take the boys whenever I can.”

“But aren’t you scared?” Mom asked. I was glad she did. It’s what I was wondering, too. That, and how she could discern all the different beans and their flavors that went into crafting this coffee. I took another sip; coffee.

“My first trip to Ivory Coast, I was still a baby. I was so scared, and I remember sitting on the Tarmac thinking, the Ivory Coast is so far from home.” Norah cradled her mug in both hands and shrugged as if traveling afar was a normal, everyday occurrence. It probably was, for her. “I just never let fear stop me from having an experience.”

The door opened and Jacob blew in with the wind. He carried a massive armload of the fresh greenery while also managing two of the paper sacks. “I’ll help you,” I said as I stood up. “I have defective taste buds.”

“That’s because you haven’t been trained to pay attention,” Norah said, shaking her head adamantly.

“Here we go,” Jacob mumbled to me as he strolled past me to the table. “Where should I dump this?”

Norah waved to the floor before continuing, “Show me anyone with average sensory abilities but with a real passion for coffee, and with practice and coaching and paying attention, they can heighten their skills in tasting.” She considered the pile of branches at our feet warily. “And that’s what I hope it’s going to be like making wreaths.” Without any hesitation, Norah cleared the newspaper off the table, tossing every section on the floor.

Mom nearly choked at that. And Dad? He would have had a major conniption at such blatant slovenliness.

Norah raised her eyebrows at Mom. “Whenever I tidied the tasting room, my mentor would always ask me, ‘Are you going to keep house or taste coffee?’”

Mom blinked as she processed that. It took me a second, too, to understand that maybe not everyone was as compulsively neat as Dad — or us. And then slowly, Mom smiled. “We’re going to make wreaths.”

I heard a muffled groan from a pained-looking Jacob, who was standing close to me.

“Yes?” said Norah, her eyebrows arching up.

Jacob nudged me. “Terra was going to show me around town, right?”

I was? And then I recalled my impulsive offer last night. I just never thought he’d actually take me up on it. Of course, it probably had more to do with the threat of floral tape and ribbons than hanging out with me. None of that, though, seemed to bother Trevor, who bounded over when Mom wiggled the largest wire form at him and told him she’d help him make the biggest wreath ever.

“So you’re okay if we left for a little bit?” I asked Mom.

“Go on,” she said without even looking at me; she was too busy pawing through the greenery to find the choicest boughs for Trevor.

“Your mom will be fine here,” said Norah, who fingered her wire form suspiciously. As I turned to follow Jacob to the door, I caught her taking a fortifying draught of coffee.

Jacob waited for me, his dark eyes fathomless. What was I going to do with him? Talk about with him? He’d been to half of the world; my world was Colville, two blocks of downtown.

“Do you want to change?” I asked Jacob, not that I minded the clothes he wore as pajamas. Not at all.

“Nah,” he said.

“So where to first?” I asked, holding my palm out for my car keys that he was still holding.

“You’re the boss,” he said, but he eyed my keys doubtfully before tossing them to me. He retrieved his own from the rack next to the door. “But I’ll do the driving.”

Once we were sitting in his Range Rover, waiting for it to warm up, Jacob didn’t even pretend that he wasn’t studying me intently. “You look like shit.”

If this were Karin, she’d tell him to go to hell. Me, I couldn’t help but duck my head and apologize, “I can’t wear makeup for a week.”

He spread his hands wide — So? “No,” he said, touching me gently on my exposed wrist. “I meant, you didn’t sleep. Your dad didn’t take the car well, did he?”

I snorted. “Definitely not.”

“So you forgot this.” He reached into the backseat, pulled out my post-op care instructions that must have slipped out of my jacket pocket last night. If Jacob hadn’t known all the details about my laser surgery last night, he certainly knew now. I took the paper as he said, “I was going to drive back with it last night, but . . .”

I knew he was referring to Dad, somehow knowing my father had spent a good chunk of the night grilling Mom, fact-checking her story, cross-referencing it with mine. More ashamed of my father than my face, I couldn’t meet Jacob’s eyes, relieved when he looked over his shoulder to back us out of the parking space. On the drive down the mountain, I might have been able to keep my gaze planted firmly on the vista outside, but I couldn’t block out the musky scent of his creamy leather seats. Even our cars sprang from different worlds. Vehicles here in the valley came in one basic style: Subaru station wagons, purchased specifically for their ability to handle snow. So Jacob’s entire lifestyle? I couldn’t even begin to fathom it, this world where Guatamala and Kenya were part of his memory, not just pushpins on my map.

“What?” Jacob asked, his gaze penetrating.

“Nothing.” My denial was rote, a knee-jerk reflex of my mouth.

We drove in silence for a while, more because I think Jacob wanted to give me space than not having anything to say.

“And this is Nest & Egg. We don’t need to go in if you don’t want to,” I told Jacob when we approached my gallery near the end of Main Street. This had to have been the world’s shortest and worst tour on record. Neither of us had dressed for the cold, him out of some warped fashion statement that precluded warm outer garments and me out of impatience to hurry Mom from home. I was lucky I had slipped on my boots. So basically every few yards, we had ducked into a store, even the ones that sold awful T-shirts imprinted with things like My Paw-Paw Loves Me, complete with bear prints.

Obviously, Jacob took his touring duties seriously, because the look he sent me was pure are you kidding? He grinned. “And miss out on the chance to see your messy studio?”

“Who says you’re going to see my studio?” I asked, getting the distinct and unpleasant sense he was approaching the gallery as an anthropological study where he’d ferret out more clues about me.

Instead of heading straight inside to warmth like a sane person, he leaned in close to the poster I had created for all the exhibits lined up for the next year. That sign was now hanging in front of the gallery to entice town shoppers and winter sports enthusiasts to visit Nest & Egg again . . . and again. I shivered, hugged my arms tight around myself.

“Great font,” said Jacob, straightening.

“Thanks, I found it,” I told him, surprised he noticed. Most people don’t see the difference between old world typefaces like my favorite Bembo, with its gorgeous delicate curves, from the supermodern ones, like plump Bodoni. For a full two days, I had congratulated myself for locating the perfect old-fashioned typeface — Windlass — a font that would have been at home on a fifteenth-century map, perfectly matching the mood for the new year’s overall theme: Journeys Beyond. The Twisted Sisters’ choice, not mine. I personally thought it sounded like a mortician’s tagline, but I had been overruled.

The parchment-colored ribbon I had glue-gunned to the back of the sign was tied in a lopsided bow and listed drunkenly from the iron stand. Clearly, Lydia’s work. She may have been the initial visionary behind the gallery, but she roved through life the way she had once painted: with huge, broad brushstrokes, leaving detail work to others like me.

Compulsive, true, but freezing or not, I couldn’t let the bow stay crooked. I had to fix it, make the length of the ends match, the loops perfectly symmetrical.

“What are you doing?” Jacob asked as I slipped the sign off the metal hanger that one of Lydia’s former lovers had welded as a good luck gift. I tried to ignore him when I set the poster on the ground and retied the bow, an impossible task when he started guffawing. There is no other way to describe the braying emanating out of that boy.

“What?” I snapped.

His lips barely moved but his words were clear: “Control freak.”

“Excuse me?”

He blinked innocently and then said, “But you’re pretty messy for a control freak.”

At first, I thought he meant my poster design, which had more elements than my usual posters, namely a large compass rose like the one I had doodled on the jeans that I was wearing, faded now after a few washes. In January, we were featuring Journeys Beyond Time with a show full of timepieces, paintings, sculptures, and one enormous hand-carved grandfather clock. But then I choked when I saw my artwork under April’s show, Journeys Beyond Place. When had the Twisted Sisters substituted the piece we had agreed to feature — a family tree created in encaustic, using an old wax-painting technique — with one of my collages? And when had I ever agreed to be in a show?

“Oh my God,” I gasped.

My stress ratcheted up another level when I saw that it wasn’t just any collage, but the one I had made for Mom — now displayed for all the world to see . . . including Dad.

“You didn’t say anything about starring in a show,” said Jacob. He looked at me curiously. “Your dad, too.”

“What?”

Jacob tapped the poster again. Directly under my name was my father’s: Dr. Grant A. Cooper, special guest speaker, The History of Cartography.

“This can’t be happening,” I breathed out.

“You didn’t know your dad was coming, did you?” Jacob guessed softly.

“I didn’t even know I was in a show.”

But the implications of this poster, my name, Dad’s presence sank in. A couple of days ago, I had broken the news to the Twisted Sisters that not only wasn’t I applying to art school, I wasn’t even going to Williams College. Hell hadn’t broken loose; silence had, cold as a whiteout blizzard. Clearly, the Twisted Sisters — who else would have led this foolish charge? — decided to map the future they thought I ought to have.

The enormity of the show hadn’t occurred to them. How could it? I kept such a strict church-and-state, never-the-twain-shall-meet separation between them and my parents, they had no idea of what Dad was truly like.

Chapter twelve

Gerrymandering

“WHAT ARE YOU GUYS THINKING?” I demanded, shaking the sign, my writ of war.

Clearly, I shouldn’t have called earlier to let Lydia know I might swing by this morning, but I had needed her to move my Beauty Map off my desk in the off-chance that Jacob would want to see my studio. The Twisted Sisters were more than prepared for me, just as they were anytime a new artist was invited to visit the gallery before their show. Lydia, Beth, and Mandy advanced upon me, a squadron of gray-haired cheerleaders wielding their blue and white pom-poms dangerously. I glanced at Jacob, had enough time to groan but not to warn him about the upcoming embarrassing spectacle.

The women now shook their pom-poms vigorously in the air. “Terra! Is! Here!”

It was a quirky gallery tradition, funny and somewhat heartwarming when the Twisted Sisters were welcoming new artists into their community. But embarrassing when that new artist happened to be me, and when a boy who I thought was cute looked on.

I couldn’t have been happier to resemble a human eggplant than I was now, because the Twisted Sisters stopped shouting as soon as they got a good look at my purpled cheek, swollen alarmingly.

“Oh, Terra, are you sure you should be here?” asked Lydia, her brows puckered with worry, her pom-poms listless at her sides.

Beth, who worked in oil paints — hence, her perpetually ruined clothes — nudged her, meaningfully. “Remember?”

Remember what? Then I recalled how I had told the gallery coowners (okay, lectured them) before the laser surgery that I’d come to work during the last half of Christmas break when my face returned to some semblance of normal so long as they didn’t make a big deal about it. Lydia recovered quickly, going all grandma-cheerleader on me, now back to shaking her hips.

“God, just stop. You’re going to hurt yourself,” I told Lydia. Mandy, the youngest of the Twisted Sisters at sixty-six, crouched in preparation for her signature Herkie jump. I had no doubt that Lydia would copy her. “C’mon, Mandy, don’t egg her on.”

Beth flipped her hair, braided into one ropey strand, over her shoulder. “You know the tradition.”

Lydia nodded her head so vigorously, her silver curls bobbed like a dog shaking off a dip in the ice-cold Methow River. She punctuated each word with her pom-pom : “What . . . are . . . you . . . afraid . . . of?”

“You guys,” I said. “God.”

Short of knocking Beth’s arm out of my way, tripping Mandy, or yanking the pom-poms from Lydia’s hands, I couldn’t even set foot into the gallery space. Suspecting imminent success, they created an arch with their shimmering pom-poms that I was supposed to run under.

“Come on,” encouraged Lydia.

That’s when I noticed Jacob’s smirk. Unlike Erik, who would have slunk out of the gallery at the first sight of all this gray hair, Jacob was leaning against a bookshelf, looking like he had nothing better to do than witness my imminent humiliation.